New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
Sepik River
The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Se ...
The climate is warm and humid, with rain falling almost every day, so that crops may be planted at any time of the year. The Kwoma territory consists of ridges with precipitous sides, nowhere rising above 1,500 feet, covered by a very dense forest canopy, as well as adjacent lowland swamps full of
sago palm
Sago palm is a common name for several plants which are used to produce a starchy food known as sago. Sago palms may be "true palms" in the family Arecaceae, or cycads with a palm-like appearance. Sago produced from cycads must be detoxified before ...
s, an important food.
Birds are abundant, but feral pigs are the only large mammals. Coconut and areca palms, pawpaw, breadfruit, and
paper mulberry
The paper mulberry (''Broussonetia papyrifera'', syn. ''Morus papyrifera'' L.) is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae. It is native to Asia,yams,
taro
Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Afri ...
, and greens are grown as the first crop in swidden gardens, with bananas and
plantain
Plantain may refer to:
Plants and fruits
* Cooking banana, banana cultivars in the genus ''Musa'' whose fruits are generally used in cooking
** True plantains, a group of cultivars of the genus ''Musa''
* ''Plantaginaceae'', a family of flowerin ...
s as the second crop.
People
The total population in 1936, the year in which the Kwoma were studied by ethnographers, was less than a thousand (in 2003, three thousand). They are surrounded by other peoples, most with even smaller populations, who speak unrelated languages. The Kwoma will speak in their own language to these outsiders, who will respond in their own language, so that intertribal communication relies upon understanding other languages, not speaking them. Relations with outsiders are often hostile, and even relations among the four Kwoma subtribes can be violent, with members of one subtribe setting out on head-hunting expeditions against another.
Each subtribe consists of several hamlets, containing households with hereditary property rights in the hamlet's land. Each hamlet contains a male ceremonial house as its focal point. All of the adult males in a hamlet are members of the same patrilineal sib, but the hamlets of each sib are not contiguous, so that the sibs are scattered about in each subtribe territory.
Each sib claims descent from a mythical
totem
A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or '' doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
While ''the ...
ancestor, and each sib is further subdivided into lineages claiming descent from a legendary hero. Within a hamlet, members of the same lineage will typically build their houses adjacent to each other. Within a lineage, descendants of a common paternal grandfather will be especially close, and sons will live adjacent to or with their father.
The Kwoma language is in the Middle Sepik stock, and their kinship system is of the Omaha type. The political system is acephalous and relatively egalitarian, though prestige is accorded senior men who have taken a head in warfare. these men hold high positions in religious cults and often have more than one wife. In the resolution of legal disputes, all males past puberty preside and have an equal voice in the final decision.
The sexual division of labor is such that both males and females work in the extraction of sago flour, and each sex has specified tasks in the gardens, but only males hunt and build houses, and only females fish. Most fish is obtained through trade, with females exchanging sago flour for fish with members of river tribes on periodic market days, occurring once or twice a week.
John Whiting's ethnography of the Kwoma, based on fieldwork conducted in 1936, was a groundbreaking effort to describe the
socialization
In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cul ...
of children in a traditional, non-Western culture.